Robot performs delicate eye surgery on six patients

May 10, 2017

London, May 10: A robot has been used to successfully perform a delicate eye surgery on six patients in a world- first trial which shows that robotic procedures can be more accurate than the trained human hand.

EyeSurgeryIn the trial, researchers from the University of Oxford in the UK performed the membrane-removal surgery on 12 patients. Six of those patients underwent the traditional procedure, and six underwent the new robotic technique.

Researchers found that those patients in the robot group experienced significantly fewer hemorrhages and less damage to the retina. The robot acts like a mechanical hand with seven independent motors that can make movements as precise as one micron, researchers said.

It operates inside the eye through a single hole less than one millimetre in diameter and goes in and out of the eye through this same hole during various steps of the procedure. However, the surgeon is in control, using a joystick and touch screen to manoeuvre the robot hand while monitoring movements through the operating microscope.

"The robotic technology is very exciting, and the ability to operate under the retina safely will represent a huge advance in developing genetic and stem cell treatments for retinal disease," Robert E MacLaren, professor at the University of Oxford was quoted as saying by 'Live Science'.

"We have demonstrated safety in a delicate operation. The system can provide high precision at 10 microns in all three primary directions, which is about 10 times more precise than what a surgeon can do," said Marc de Smet from University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, who helped design the robot.

The team first used the system on a 70-year-old priest from UK, in September las year. Upon the success of that surgery, they conducted a study on 11 more patients in a randomised clinical trial, hoping to measure the robotic system's accuracy compared to the human hand.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
January 19,2020

New Delhi, Jan 19: Messaging service WhatsApp which on Sunday faced issues in transmitting multimedia content including pictures and images, prompting social media users to share hilarious memes and messages, resumed regular services after over two hours.

#WhatsAppDown was the trending hashtag on Twitter for most part of Sunday afternoon in India along with several other countries such as Brazil, Europe and also parts of Middle-East including UAE, reported downdetector.in, a realtime problem and outage monitoring website.

Users of the popular messaging app were unable to send media files, stickers and GIFs.

Most users immediately went to Twitter to find out about the problem and check if others were facing the same issue.

Numerous tweets and memes took over the internet as soon as the news broke about the WhatsApp tech issue. After around two hours of technical glitch, the app resumed full service.

Even after full recovery of media transfer, people globally still continued checking the status of the messaging app.

WhatsApp has been one of the prime messaging apps since May 2009 and has recently collaborated with Facebook.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
April 4,2020

Kozhikode, Apr 4: In a bid to maintain the lockdown amid COVID-19 outbreak, Police in Kozhikode is monitoring the situation using drone cameras and making sure that people are not breaking the law.

The police have so far arrested 41 persons who were out on a morning walk on Saturday during the lockdown in the backdrop of coronavirus outbreak.

The SHO of Town South Police Station informed that the accused were later released on bail.
At least 295 cases have been reported in the state so far.

Talking about COVID-19 testing, State Health Minister KK Shailaja told media: "Nine labs are conducting polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests in Kerala. We've received 2000 rapid test kits and will start rapid tests from tomorrow. If a person tests positive in rapid test, we need to confirm it with PCR test."

The total number of COVID-19 positive cases in India climbed to 3072 on Saturday, according to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
July 2,2020

Leiden, Jul 2: Astronomers have discovered a luminous galaxy caught in the act of reionizing its surrounding gas only 800 million years after the Big Bang.

The research, led by Romain Meyer, PhD student at UCL in London, UK, has been presented at the virtual annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS).

Studying the first galaxies that formed 13 billion years ago is essential to understanding our cosmic origins. One of the current hot topics in extragalactic astronomy is 'cosmic reionization,' the process in which the intergalactic gas was ionized (atoms stripped of their electrons).

Cosmic reionization is similar to an unsolved murder: We have clear evidence for it, but who did it, how and when? We now have strong evidence that hydrogen reionization was completed about 13 billion years ago, in the first billion years of the universe, with bubbles of ionized gas slowly growing and overlapping.

The objects capable of creating such ionized hydrogen bubbles have however remained mysterious until now: the discovery of a luminous galaxy in which 60-100 percent of ionizing photons escape, is likely responsible for ionizing its local bubble. This suggests the case is closer to being solved.

The two main suspects for cosmic reionization are usually 1) a population of numerous faint galaxies leaking ~10 percent of their energetic photons, and 2) an 'oligarchy' of luminous galaxies with a much larger percentage (>50 percent) of photons escaping each galaxy.

In either case, these first galaxies were very different from those today: galaxies in the local universe are very inefficient leakers, with only <2-3 percent of ionizing photons escaping their host. To understand which galaxies governed cosmic reionization, astronomers must measure the so-called escape fractions of galaxies in the reionization era.

The detection of light from excited hydrogen atoms (the so-called Lyman-alpha line) can be used to infer the fraction of escaping photons. On the one hand, such detections are rare because reionization-era galaxies are surrounded by neutral gas which absorbs that signature hydrogen emission.

On the other hand, if this hydrogen signal is detected it represents a 'smoking gun' for a large ionized bubble, meaning we have caught a galaxy reionizing its surroundings. The size of the bubble and the galaxy's luminosity determines whether it is solely responsible for creating this ionized bubble or if unseen accomplices are necessary.

The discovery of a luminous galaxy 800 million years after the Big Bang supports the scenario where an 'oligarchy' of bright leakers emits most of the ionizing photons.

"It is the first time we can point to an object responsible for creating an ionized bubble, without the need for a contribution from unseen galaxies.

Additional observations with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will enable us to study further what is likely one of the best suspects for the unsolved case of cosmic reionization," said Meyer.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.